The debates at the UN General Assembly on whether to adopt a convention against human cloning, which began in February 2002, are once more on the agenda for 21 and 22 October.

Opinion is divided between those in favour of a complete ban on human cloning and those calling for a ban on reproductive cloning only.

Costa Rica, supported by 60 countries (including the United States and the Vatican), called for a complete ban on all forms of cloning, i.e. cloning embryos to give birth to a child (so-called reproductive cloning) and cloning embryos for research (so-called therapeutic cloning). It stressed that all cloning was the same, always resulting in an embryo being reproduced.

Belgium's proposal, supported namely by China, Japan, the United Kingdom and France, provides for a ban on reproductive cloning only and suggests allowing each country to make its own legislation with regard to cloning embryos for research.

In the absence of a consensus, the debate was postponed for 2 years in November 2003 to 2005, as proposed by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. In the end, the discussions were held this year. Meanwhile, the 22 members of the League of Arab Nations have signed a declaration banning all forms of cloning.

If no consensus is reached on an international convention banning all forms of cloning, it may be left to each Nation to make its own laws.

Read on line No prohibition of human cloning by the UNO (November 2003 Genethique Newsletter)

Nouvelobs.com (Cécile Dumas) 18/10/04 -

In the British Medical Journal and The Washington Post, Indian economist, Amartya Sen, has sounded the alarm over the demographic imbalance between girls and boys in Asia caused by female infanticide. The continent has a shortage of over 100 million women. This risks causing increased aggression in India and China.

According to INED (French National Institute of Demographic Studies), most of humanity lives in countries where the population will not be replaced. INED has recently dedicated its Populations & Sociétés publication to this subject with an article by Chris Wilson and Gilles Pison entitled "La majorité de l'humanité vit dans un pays où la fécondité est basse" (Most of Humanity Lives in Countries with Low Fertility). In fifty years, average fertility has fallen from 5.4 to 2.1 children. In less than 10 years, fertility has collapsed in most "emerging" countries: Brazil, Tunisia, Iran as well as China (21% of the world's population) and India (17%). In Europe, the Czech Republic holds the lowest fertility rate with 1.17 children per woman. In Russia, the population is dropping by 750,000 people per year.

The world population will rise up until 2050 to stabilise at 10 billion inhabitants before dropping. At the moment, the populations with more than 4 children live in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Iberian Peninsula and sub-Saharan Africa. These countries are the ones that will enable the world population to increase.

According to Olivier Jay, a journalist, this drop in fertility is mainly due to contraception and massive sterilisation campaigns as well as economic prosperity. He shows that the reverse of the 70s' catastrophic overpopulation predictions is occurring. INED demographists explain: "Societies will realise that the weight of dependent old people will be far greater than that of infants."

[Editor's note: On this subject, we recommend the book by philosopher and theologian, Michel Schooyans, Le crash démographique (The Demographic Crash), published in 1999. He analyses the causes and consequences of the demographic decline and explains that the danger does not lie in overpopulation but in a "shortage of human beings". Le crash démographique by Michel Schooyans is published by Fayard, 1999.]

La Croix (Olivier Jay) 21/10/04 - Libération (Sylvie Bret) 05/10/04 - Famille Chrétienne 23-29/10/04

Jacques Chirac, on a visit to the Cantal region yesterday, announced that a bill was to be introduced on genetically modified organisms (GMO) "that aimed at establishing a clear framework for research and transcribing applicable community directives [into French law]." He was accompanied by Hervé Gaymard, Minister of Agriculture, who urged for the issue to be approached "with objectivity, reason and without preconceived ideas or inappropriate passion", which meant a need "to know how to assess, select, experiment, authorise or prohibit and supervise".

This bill, to be presented two weeks from now, is set to transcribe two European directives into French law, the one on GMO tests in the laboratory and the other on tests in the field.

FNSEA (French national farmers' union) president, Jean-Michel Lemétayer, declared his satisfaction: "This attitude to research is also my own. We must allow scientists to work and politicians to decide."

A parliamentary enquiry into the consequences for the environment and health of allowing GMO tests has been set up, headed by Jean-Yves Le Déault (PS) with Christian Ménard (UMP) as rapporteur. It consists of 31 members.

Le Figaro 22 et 26/10/04 - Libération 22/10/04 - Le Quotidien du Médecin 22/10/04

During the American Reproductive Medicine Society conference (16-20 October 2004), the team from the University of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) led by Gerald Schatten presented its work on cloned monkey embryos. These embryos were implanted in females and gestation only lasted one month. It is the first time that cloned monkey embryos have gone so far. The researchers did not manage to extract a line of stem cells from the cloned embryos. By cloning monkey embryos, the researchers avoid using human embryos and ovocytes and hope to obtain very similar research material.

According to Nature, the American team confirmed the nuclear transfer technique (cloning) used by the South Korean team last February which led to the creation of cloned human embryos (see February 2004 Genethique Newsletter).

Read the Nature article on line (News section) Biologists come close to cloning primates.

Nouvelobs.com (Cécile Dumas) 22/10/04

The Brazilian Ministers of Health and Science are set to invest 4.3 million dollars in adult stem cell research to develop treatments for certain heart diseases. The stem cells will be taken from patients' bone marrow and injected into their heart muscles in order to rebuild damaged tissue.

The three-year study will involve 1,200 heart patients and be coordinated by the Laranjeiras National Heart Institute. It will focus on four types of heart diseases: cardiopathy, chronic ischemia, acute heart attacks and heart problems caused by Chagas' disease.

According to Reinaldo Guimarães, head of the Science and Technology Department at the Ministry of Health, this programme is particularly important as heart problems have become one of the main causes of disease, disability and death in Brazil.

SciDev.net (Luisa Massarani) 15/10/04

The response of a La Croix (Catholic newspaper) reader is published below.

The reader refutes the term "idealist", employed by the newspaper, to speak of the Church's doctrine which considers the deliberate murder of an embryo as an abortion. He recalled that idealism is "either a position so steeped in ideals as to be unrealistic or a philosophical position which tends to reduce existence to thought alone."

However, the Church starts with a reality, the living embryo, "a new human being that develops for itself" from fertilisation, "that will never become human if it is not already so" (Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration on Induced Abortion). The embryo exists before and independently of society's view of it. On the contrary, "the utilitarian position betrays the most extreme idealism by giving embryos a status that varies only according to parents' ideal project."

The reader shows the Church's pragmatic standpoint that acknowledges the difficulty of deciding the issue of "qualifying the embryo as a human being" but declares that "the simple probability of finding oneself faced with a person should be enough to justify a categorical ban on any intervention leading to the elimination of a human being" (Evangelium Vitae encyclical). He continued, "We can allow ourselves theoretical doubt; in practice, however, there is no middle path between respecting the embryo and objectifying it."

La Croix 20/10/04

In recent years, scientists have opened doors that give access to entirely new and promising possibilities. The ability to obtain stem cells, cultivate them in vitro, have them developp into determined types of cell and tissue, and use them therapeutically to cure human diseases, presents the world with perspectives unconceivable until recently.

As often happens with the progress made by science and technology, the hope awakened by these new prosppects is accompanied by questions of en ethical character, which echo the concerns that shaped the Declaration of Helsinki (1964). In this document, the World Medical Association affirmed that "the concern over the interest of the subject must always prevail over the interests of science and society".

The present debate calls for serious reflection : reflection upon the values and the individuals involved in stem cell research and therapeutic cloning. Delicate, transcendent problems exist which cannot be resolved by popular vote or partial studies. Thus, under the guidance of the Scientific Committee, the Guilé Foundation (Switzerland), the Faculty of Bioethics of the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum (Rome) and the Faculty of Biochemistry of the Centro Universitario Francisco de Vitoria (Madrid), wish to offer a platform for open an sincere dialogue. They publish The Stem cell Dilemma, for the good of all human beings ?

The Stem cell Dilemma, for the good of all human beings ? by Guilé Foundation Press, Ed. Gonzalo Miranda, LC.